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. 2015 Sep 15;6(32):33805–33822. doi: 10.18632/oncotarget.5668

Figure 1. MUC4 expression is increased in PDAC and correlates with NI.

Figure 1

A. Real-time RT-PCR analysis of MUC4 mRNA levels in 82 PDAC tissues and paired adjacent tissues. B. Real-time RT-PCR analysis of MUC4 mRNA levels in PDAC cell lines. C. Western blot analysis of MUC4 protein levels in PDAC cell lines. D. Immunohistochemical staining of MUC4 in normal pancreatic and PDAC tissues. (1) Negative staining in normal pancreatic tissue; (2) positivestaining in PDAC tissues and localization at the cell membrane; (3, 4, 5) three pathological stages of NI in PDAC tissues: (3) epineural tumor associations (ENAs) (i.e., lesions in which the cancer cells are directly touching the epineural sheet without penetrating the perineurium); (4) perineural invasion (PNI) (i.e., infiltration of cancer cells within the perineurium); (5) endoneural invasion (ENI) (i.e., infiltration of cancer cells into the endoneurium). N indicates nerve, red arrow points to the perineurium of the nerve, yellow arrow points to the endoneurium of the nerve, and brown staining at the cell membrane indicates PDAC cells. Original magnification, 200×; scale bar =100 μm. E. Box plot showing the immunohistochemistry (IHC) scores for MUC4 protein expression in 67 PDACtissues with NI and in 15 PDAC tissues without NI (non-NI). Differenceswere analysed using the Mann-Whitney U-test. F. MUC4 mRNA expression in 67 PDAC tissues with NI and in 15 PDAC tissues without NI (non-NI). The data are presented as mean ± SEM. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.